Errors with window managers in Arch?

Hey,

I have been using arch for some time now. I just bought a new laptop that runs Windoze 7 (for vSphere management). I installed Arch Linux in a Vmware workstation VM for the time being (will be partitioning my disk and using a dual-boot).

The Arch version I am using is Arch-2012.07.15. Been using this version for a while now. Inside this VM, I got my disks partitioned, my bootloader installed and good to go, all the base packages insides, etc. Basically everything before installing a GUI like Gnome/KDE/LXDE/XFCE. Xorg is installed and functioning properly. The Xf86-video-vmware, xf86-input-keyboard and xf86-input-mouse drivers have been installed.

When I went to edit my rc.conf file, I noticed it wasn't there. Searched some and it appears like Arch has gone to systemd. I didn't use the new systemd setup, I went ahead and did "pacman -S initscripts" which gave my rc.conf file.

Anyway, I went to install Gnome first and the installation was fine; went into rc.conf and added the gdm daemon to the "DAEMONS=()" section (along with hal, dbus, network, netfs, crond, alsa). I reboot and Gnome starts on boot. What happens is it will load a blue screen (solid blue) and in the middle is a white box that *should* be for the username/password prompt. That happens and then it stops and goes back to CLI. About two seconds after that it cycles back into trying to load Gnome. It just repeats and I can't stop it, so I went back to a snapshot.

Tried KDE, it logins in fine but as soon as I try to launch terminal, it brings me back to the login screen. Can't do much about it on any window manager.

Anyone heard of this error? What causes it? It has never happened to me before. Maybe 4 months ago I put Arch on my desktop with no issues... also have a two Arch installs that function as servers in ESXi.

Re: Errors with window managers in Arch?

you have some news and wiki reading to do, initscripts support will be dropped soon, you have to boot with systemd for the system to work properly. No more rc.conf, no more DAEMONS array etc... While the fact that you don't use systemd may not be the direct cause of your problems, you cannot expect any support while still running initscripts.

And what the hell are you still using hal for, it has been deprecated and basically useless for years!? Maybe it's even what causes your problems.